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Last night, my Wednesday night ladies' group discussed chapter four from One Thousand Gifts entitled "A Sanctuary of Time" much of it focused on how we hurry through life, not taking time to really 'be' in the moment, to appreciate it as one that God has given to us, that He is here present in it. My default seems to be that I want to hurry through, because I am always thinking ahead to the next task, the next thing to mark off of my to-do list, and so I hurry through the moments. And as I sat down to write this post, I realized that the last few weeks since Micah has been out of school/studying, I have done some of both of those things. We have stayed incredibly busy (taking a trip, then trying to get caught up from missed work, a major purge from our house, etc.), and I have enjoyed these weeks immensely, but also have not taken the time to always be fully in the moment and just give thanks. I am such a creature of habit and routine and when those things are…

We spent four days this past week in southeast Oklahoma at Beaver's Bend State Park and Broken Bow lake. And while it was a wonderful trip that I would love to actually recap for you, I have decided maybe a quick list would be the best way to share snippets. I am feeling a bit overwhelmed with coming back to 'life' and so even though I have been attempting to type this since Thursday night, I have yet been able to complete a real thought. So, here are some favorite things from our trip:

1. Going to Robber's Cave State Park on the way down where Jesse James allegedly used to hide out in between raids. Try explaining that to your 5 year olds. The entire time that we were there, they were looking for the robbers so that we could tell the police where they were.

2. Our super nice cabin. Seriously, it was heaven having our own little house that was complete with 2 bedrooms/bathrooms, a kitchen, living area, deck, and even a Playstation 2 that doubled as a DVD player…

For the past couple of summers, we have been active participants in the Summer Reading Program at the library. I grew up loving to read and I hope that I instill that love in my boys, and so we try to head to the library at least once a week to pick out new books. I love that the boys love books about nature and specifically animals. In fact, except for the fact that I insist they also pick some story books as well (mostly for my own sanity), they would be quite content to pick only books from the animal/nature book aisles. Honestly, you can only read through so many books every week about sloths and beetles and cheetahs--those books are high on words...and by high, I mean 'single-spaced-small-font-pages-filled.' And as much as I adore reading the minute details of the life cycle of beetles, bees, and ants, I need a little light reading every now and then as well!

Anyway, this year, we have also discovered that they have performances and special events for kids each week…

534.Super fun, super silly kids music show at the library 535.My flowers on the porch—still living 536.Going to the grocery store on my own 537.Talking over the day with Micah 538.Going for a walk/run 539.A playdate at the splash pad 540.Progress on a big project 541.Blueberries with fresh lemon cream 542.Sitting outside on the patio as the day fades—no distractions 543.Watching the moon brighten as the sky darkens

Just a few things heard around our house recently: "bro"--this is Xavier's new preferred name for his brother, as in 'hey, bro, let's go do this...' 'bro, get that...' 'great job, bro!' I think they got the idea from these way cute shirts: William still prefers to use the old standby "brudder" but it never ceases to crack me up hearing 'bro'. "well, we've seen you do that like a million times..." in reference to many different things, usually while insisting that they get to do something that I am trying to do for them. This past Saturday we were at the grocery store and they had smaller carts and so I let the boys push it together (which was much less stressful than me trying to push it while they hang on to either side). So, as we were headed out to the car, I was telling them thank you for all their help with the cart and Xavier replies, "well, we've seen you do it like a million times, so that…

I am completely stealing this blog title from my sister's more regularly updated blog. I contemplated calling it "catch up", but honestly, that seems to have been the theme for the last several weeks in this blog's life. So, I am going to go with Melissa's tactic of just giving tidbits. Micah took his Step 1 boards yesterday. 400 questions, 8 hours, lots of stress. He didn't feel awesome about it, apparently it was quite the difficult test day. Depending on the day you take the test, you get a different exam and apparently, yesterday's was a doozy. This was they consensus by all who took the test--and this after spending the better part of a month studying like 10-12 hours a day. Craziness, I tell you. Anyway, he will find out his results in about 6 weeks. I am quite confident that he did well, but it is always nice to have concrete evidence of that! Last week, the boys did their kindergarten evaluations and while I was fairly confident they were re…

I seriously can't commit to a title for this blog post or a theme to go with. I have started and erased literally like 10 times, much like the scrapbook page I started earlier tonight and after messing with it for over an hour, changing it up 15 different times and still hating it, I decided it was time to just close photoshop for a while.

We have been busy busy busy this week.

Micah is working hard studying like crazy for his exam on Monday. And I know he would appreciate any and all thoughts and prayers for him.

I am working hard at not going crazy enjoying this summer with two rather energetic five year olds.

The boys are working hard at bouncing off the walls expending every spare ounce of energy by playing very exuberantly from morning till night.

I do have two pictures to share. I rarely dress them exactly alike these days, and they have very few completely matching outfits. But, I found these shorts at Gymboree last fall on clearance and thought they were so cute th…

First of all, let me apologize for scaring so many of you. I should have led with "things are all good", I really didn't intend to make it all dramatic, it was just the way the conversation was going in my head. Thank you so much for your kind encouraging words, for your concern for me and my family, you blessed me with your kindness. We are still waiting to hear back on some blood work that will hopefully give us a better indication of why my levels were elevated. I, for one, am choosing not to worry about it. Micah, on the other hand, is a wee bit stressed and in his words, "he is my husband and so he can be". I will give him that, because if the shoe were on the other foot, I would be worried as well. He is studying his little heart out this week (and let's be honest, he has been for the last two years) for his Step 1 boards examination next Monday morning. I can't even express how proud I am of him, it is hard work what he is doing and I am…

Yesterday started as a pretty ordinary day for me. I got up, had some quiet time, the boys got up, we got dressed and ready for the day, I dropped them off at a friend's house while I headed to Tulsa for a doctor's appointment....my regular/routine three month appointment with my oncologist. The one where I go in, have bloodwork, he does an exam, asks if I am having any problems, tells me my bloodwork looks great, gives me a hug, and tells me he will see me in three months. Except that yesterday, he didn't tell me that my bloodwork looked great, he told me that my alkaline phosphatase levels were elevated and that he wanted to order a bone scan for today.

Deep breath....okay.

He reminded me that I had just had a PET scan about 6 weeks ago that was clear, so he was confident that this was going to be fine, he just wanted to get it checked out. Then, as he was listening to my lungs, he tells me that my heart is beating kind of fast....well, yes, it is--because I just …

I love it when the innocence of childhood brings up interesting conversations. Last night after some particularly trying visits to a clothing store and two grocery stores, we were on our way home and saw this:

It was really beautiful and I pointed it out to the boys and Xavier immediately said: "ooh, it looks like heaven!" which then led to a discussion about heaven and whether we would recognize grandma and grandpa since we would all be getting new 'shells' when we get to heaven. Then, we talked about the streets being gold and Xavier also wanted to know if we would be taking our white van to heaven to drive on the aforementioned golden streets.